


Cover me with flowers

by Beleriandings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Flowers, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15483534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Yasha said nothing; she just sat beside him, waiting for him to elaborate, not hurrying him. He loved this about her, this understanding that if something was to be spoken, then rushing it would not make it easier. “These flowers” he said, looking around the grass surrounding the stump on which they sat; sure enough, there was a sprawling patch of them that he had not noticed when the circus had stopped to camp a little way off. “They are… one of the first things I remember.”





	Cover me with flowers

“Yasha! There you are. What are you doing over here?”

Yasha looked up from her book. “Trying to save these” she told Molly, half turning around where she sat on a stump, showing him a lapful of flowers. Pale pink, purple and white, long stems bearing many drop-shaped blossoms, the insides delicately freckled with dark red. “Only, they’re a little too big for my book, so I’m having some trouble...” she broke off, frowning a little at him. “Are you...all right?”

Her voice seemed to come from very far away, as his mind tugged on something. Something _old_ , or as old as could be found in the still-echoing chambers in his head, though he had done his best to fill them with bright new experiences this past year or so. To decorate the walls, so to speak, and make it feel like his own.

Nevertheless, there was that _tug_ , like a knot that could not be undone; it was often so, with memories of those first days.

Sometimes though – as now – the knot came loose, and suddenly it was as though his mind were freefalling backwards, back into the soft-focus strangeness from which he had come. That formless time when he had only been the raw material with which he had so carefully molded into what he called himself, over the months he had been with the circus.

“Molly? Molly!”

He blinked, pulling himself – not without some difficulty - out of the past, letting what he hoped was a reassuring, gentle smile cross his face. “Ah...yes, sorry.” Yasha’s eyebrows were raised in confusion, so he waved a hand languidly in the air beside his head. “Memories. I think.”

“...Oh?”

He sat down beside her. “ _Oh_ , indeed.” he picked up a bundle of the flowers in his hands, peering into their bell-shaped blooms. Yasha said nothing; she just sat beside him, waiting for him to elaborate, not hurrying him. He loved this about her, this understanding that if something was to be spoken, then rushing it would not make it easier. “These flowers” he said, looking around the grass surrounding the stump on which they sat; sure enough, there was a sprawling patch of them that he had not noticed when the circus had stopped to camp a little way off. “They are… one of the first things I remember.”

Those memories had a different quality to the later ones; they were vague and indistinct, but raw, immediate in the strength of them, all sensation and unformed emotion. Emptiness needs filling, after all. Though the memories were faint now, not present in the front of his mind, they were easier to bring back with scents or colours.

Which was why the flowers in Yasha’s lap, spread in a bright spray across her knees and the open pages of her book below, had brought back such a rush of memory. Memories of the ground, cold, damp earth under his fingernails. The scent of the flowers, growing nearby in a soft drift of colour by the roadside beside the open, ragged hole in the ground, the tear in the earth from which he had clawed his way.

For the first few days – he didn’t know how many, but he had seen the moon and the sun arc their way across the sky several times before the circus wagons passed through – he had merely sat trembling amongst the swaying stems. At night, he didn’t remember sleeping, though he supposed he must have; he merely remembered the flowers, drawn of their colour by the moon. In the day they were brighter, vivid against the sunlit green grass. Too bright; everything had felt too bright, those few days.

Those first days, there had been only the too-bright sun and the gentler comfort of the moon. There was that fearful, ragged scar in the earth – he didn’t want to look at it, lest he feel it pressing cold and heavy to his face once again. There was the fast wind across the grass and the flowers, as his mind chased itself in panicked circles, the emptiness fearsomely loud. The way them stems had brushed against his legs and his tail as he had walked through them, the scent as they were crushed under his feet.

Then the circus came.

They were kind, but they were also so _much_ at first, asking him questions to which he had no answers; _what’s your name? Where are you from? Do you remember what happened to you? Do you have any friends or family?_ He couldn’t answer a single one; he could barely parse their meaning fast enough, with his own mind screaming the same questions right back to him. Too much too soon, a whole life trying to fit around a person who had nothing to grasp at, no experience of the world to compare anything with.

He had panicked and trembled, before Gustav had first laid a steady hand on his back. That made it a little better, but still the whole world was too much, a whirl of colour and people speaking to him. Asking him questions he couldn’t answer save for with one word, his lips only just able to form its syllables. But he _could_ manage them, just about, and so he remembered he had repeated it like a prayer, clinging to it even though he didn’t understand why. Saying it until it lost all meaning, transforming into just a series of sound; _empty. Empty, empty empty_.

In the present, he smiled, rolling a stem between his fingertips. “Just old things” he said, leaning his head on Yasha’s shoulder. “Nothing to worry about.”

She nodded, letting her head drop a little, her warm cheek pressed against the place where Molly’s horn met his skin. It was a nice sort of closeness. “You should be careful with those” she said, indicating the flower in his hand. “They are quite poisonous. People back where I’m from used to use them to make poisons, anyway. So, you shouldn’t let them touch your skin too much.”

He raised his head and looked up at her. “Oh….really? Well, that’s something I didn’t know...” there  were many such things, even now. The more he learned about the world, the more there seemed like was left to find out. It was intoxicating and frightening at once.

She nodded. “Yes. But that’s not why I’m collecting them though!” she added, a little hastily. “I don’t want to make poison. They’re just... very beautiful.”

He almost laughed. “I like that” he said, twirling the flower between his fingers, smelling it and laying it gently back in Yasha’s lap. “I like it very much.”

She nodded, breaking off a piece of the flower, carefully snapping it with a fingernail to the size of the pages of her book. “I do, too.”

“What else do you know about them?” he asked her; he loved to listen to her talk. He had found out that she spoke more when it was just the two of them, and since then had set about trying to let her know that she could trust him, and from there their friendship had grown.

“You would really like to know?”

Molly nodded. “We’re not going anywhere today. Tell me about these flowers?”

“Well, ah...they are a kind that grow in my home land too, though there are many other colours there. I’ve only ever seen pink and white and purple here.”

“All extremely good colours, of course.”

She leaned her head briefly against his head again. “Yes, of course!”

“What are they called then, these flowers?”

She had to think for a moment. “The name, um, translates to something like… fox...gloves?” Yasha took another bloom, snapped it to the right size, carefully laying it between the pages.

“What a good name” said Molly. “If I were a fox, I couldn’t ask for prettier little gloves for my paws.”

Yasha laughed. “Poisonous ones.”

“Makes it more fun, maybe.”

“You have a very strange definition of fun.”

“Oh, I should hope so. It’s something I’m trying to cultivate, you know.”

She laughed her quiet laugh again, and after that they fell into companionable silence for a while, as Yasha took the last flowers and placed them between the pages of her book. After she had finished, they simply sat side by side for a while under the sun, looking out at the swaying flowers and the grass, rippling under the wind of a cloud-scattered sky.

“Molly?” said Yasha at last, her voice quiet, vibrating against the side of his head; he had been nearly asleep, lulled into calm by the presence of her, the repetitive motions of her turning the pages of her book.

He raised his head. “Yes, dear?”

“You know...” she frowned, looking as though she was struggling to put something into words, or debating whether to say it at all. “We also used to...put these on graves. That was the main reason I knew them, actually. When someone died, we would give them these flowers. Sometimes the...the seeds would take root in the cemetery too, and the older graves would be covered in them too.” She seemed to see something on his face. “Oh...sorry...memories…? I can...”

“No” he said. “No, it...it sounds beautiful.” He frowned. “These didn’t grow over my grave. I wasn’t in it long enough, I assume.” He laughed a little, rubbed at his wrist, where the tattoo he had gotten ten days ago was still healing; he had not realised it would itch quite so much, but it was getting better by the day. “Still, I should think that if I ever plan on being in a grave permanently this would be a very pretty sort of way to decorate it, which you know I’m always in favour of.” He grinned, trying to reassure her as he noticed the worry still on her face; she still felt guilty for bringing it up at all, he could tell. “Not that I plan on being buried again anytime soon, permanently or otherwise. At least not until I’ve had my fill of whatever joys this world has still to offer.” He yawned, stretching like a cat. “And listening to you tell me about pretty, poisonous flowers is one of those. You’ve just got one of those voices, you know?”

“I don’t know if that was supposed to be a compliment, or…?”

“It was, so please do take it as one.” He patted her arm, reassured by the solidity of it. He brought his legs up under his chin, humming in a pleased sort of way as she put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him wordlessly close to her side.  “And really...don’t worry about me, Yasha” he said.

She turned her head down to him, giving him that appraising look of slight concern once more. “Really? You’re all right?”

Something about her tone told him that she wasn’t just talking about today, about the blankness in his eyes as he had fallen into the past before. He flicked his tail against her leg as he leaned into the one-armed hug, and smiled to himself. “Yes. In fact, I am getting better every day.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song of the same title by David Sylvian, which feels like a sombre-ish Molly mood. I started this way back before episode 26 then got too sad to finish it until my friend @paradife-loft on tumblr got into the series and gave me Feelings about these two all over again. But I really love their friendship and this was somewhat healing to write??? Let me know what you think, and/or visit me on tumblr @kanafinwhy


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